5 ms·

On the consumer side I also would prefer 15% higher pricing than to have to deal with various different payment forms as well as the difficulty of keeping track

by ummonk 6y ago

On the consumer side I also would prefer 15% higher pricing than to have to deal with various different payment forms as well as the difficulty of keeping track of and canceling various subscriptions.

thewebcount 6y ago
Yeah, same here. And even when it's a processor I know like Stripe, Square, or Shopify, I don't really trust those companies very much. I've gotten spam, other people's receipts, etc. from them and their tech support is horrible for the consumer. And if they aren't a name I know like one of the above, I'm really leery of giving them my email and credit card info!
- cuddlybacon 6y ago
  Same here. The last time I bought software that wasn't thru a well known store or processor I ended up with some fraudulent purchases on my next credit card bill[0]. Since then, I'll never do that again. [0] - Thankfully my bank handled this without issue.
- YeBanKo 6y ago
  While I am skeptical of cryptocurrencies, more and more often I catch myself thinking: I wish this seller just accepted bitcoin or something. I want to make a transaction and be done with it. I don’t want my email and credit card number end up anywhere long term. There was a lunch place near my work that I frequented. They used Square POS terminal, once I noticed that it somehow linked my email to my credit card, I started using cash to pay. Cash is horribly inconvenient and gross to handle, but at least once you paid you don’t need to worry about it. You can’t be hit with some unexpected charges, wait to check the transaction when posted, no possibility of data leak, no privacy concerns, etc.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Wasn't ApplePay supposed to address this? Each transaction creates a one-time-use number which is the only number the seller receives. It would no longer be valid if evilHacker(TM) tries to use that number for a fraudulent charge later.
    - Cullinet 6y ago
      At least in the UK, Monzo Bank gives me the ability to create and tear down virtual debit cards that I can name and use to individually identify which card I used. Each is complete with a CVC number. It's not one time unless you want to do the setup and teardown for every purchase, but the £15 monthly fee includes phone and other insurance and the app exports your account ledger to Excel and CSV. Customer service and vanishing transactions from the app ledger have been worrying me but I was promptly put in touch with management as soon as I dusted off a smidgeon of English idiomatic equivalents to "wtf" and this seems to have been caused by Transport For London running adjustments for the daily Oyster journey payment limit (via taking a holding charge placeholder payment in the way hotels ring fence for your stay on debit cards) so the final amount is adjusted the following day to enable the 0400 end of their day.
      - dylan604 6y ago
        So in 2020, in order to allow the employees to keep banker's hours and go home indecently early, they put a hold on a card so an employee can finalize the transaction the following day rather than just letting the computers handle the transaction to completion? How/Why is this still a thing? Just like why does depositing a check have a hold on it when the computer can quite easily check that the money is available for withdraw, and then move it to the depositor's account? The entire banking industry is so ripe for re-imagining, yet their strangle hold onto the old ways is super preventative from us evolving as a species.
        jen20 6y ago
        0400 is 4AM, not 4PM, and has nothing to do with banking hours. 4am is the cut off time between “days” for TFL (London Transit) services - if you buy a ‘day travelcard’ it is good until 4am the following day. It is guaranteed that if you make several transactions in the same day on TFL (by swiping in/out with a contactless card - or an Oyster card - at the ticket gates), the amount paid will be capped at the value of a day travelcard. I’m quite sure no employee is involved in any of this, and computers handle it end-to-end. Banking in the UK is actually quite reasonable - largely because companies like Monzo have pushed it forward. It’s a constant surprise to me quite how _bad_ banking in the US is in comparison though - and most of your points seem to reflect how US banking works rather than UK banking - as indicated both by the spelling of “cheque” and the notion of using them in the first place.
Cullinet 6y ago
Being officially "semi retired" to cover a crisis of faith in the industry after a spinal problem nearly trashed my mental composure, and because of experiencing memory problems after quitting the painkillers [0], and consequently buying into Apple for the first time since 1987, I came to this discussion expecting to find reasons why I shouldn't commit to publishing the apps I've been working on [1] via the Apple Store. But 15% of gross? I have been thinking it was 30 percent of gross for the longest time and I can't believe myself for getting this so wrong. I worked in advertising sales when the industry was freaking out over losing the universal 15% gross "agency fee" [2] for a multitude of hopeless performance contracts [3] and on the other side, when I sold space for a major publisher my own commission was 15% of gross. A good salesman is worth 15%. At least to me. The thing that's drawing me, now far more strongly, to publishing via the store is that although vexing problems exist, this looks like the most transparent platform to my eyes because the developer community is surfacing the issues and not burying problems with FUD and MVP-speak. Credit obviously to the community above all. But even giants struggle with enabling any community. [0] Gabapentin. 2016: "NOT addictive don't worry John." 2019:"can I have you signature and ID?" - the UK government classified Gabapentin Schedule A along with heroin and cocaine. 8 months of dystopia and another 5 remembering how to think later the top "user reviews" found in the wild still praise Gabapentin to high heaven. Yes it does temporary wonders for concentration. I never took my full dose which was the minimum adult dose and broke regime regularly for at least two weeks a time and I don't even know how to describe the 8 months of "hell" because they were just too messed up. Gabapentin probably has amazing off label potential but now it's scheduled forget about intelligent prescribing. [1] deep into the data structures for a advertising scheduler with fun like network flow limits (since we discussed on Shannon, if this is enough to tickle you I'd love to hear from you, I've got man decades in this needing fresh eyes. [1] gross percentage fees wreck trading advertising simply. Google plus all mighty consortium wrote off $350MM in 2004 and AdAge said they were stuck on things we solved early. We hadn't solved lots they had. My Cofounder tragically died before the close of a critical stock placement and key man (that I insisted on afraid to ever lose a wonderful friend as well as Cofounder - replying to a snark about business and friendship he snapped (to a old friend of his no less I learned) "I don't know what kind of person you want to be in business with then but I hope you think better of your investors") [2] my original paper of 1995 cited the total economic capture of the agencies to be 60% of the gross total industry budget. I didn't hear anything similar until in 2018 the former chairman of Mediacom the UKs biggest buyer pull the exact same figure out of thin air. [3] the recent highly acclaimed book "Manslaughter On Madison Avenue" explains how the problems that made me light out for the territory in 1995 remain not only not fixed but not even addressed. Briefly I felt terrible pangs for trying to help the agencies who threw vexatious criminal copyright breach torts in the High Court at us within days of opening. Then I realised that anyone who can tell the problems just ran for the hills. Only being a partnership let us survive. A limited company requires professional counsel. I learned IP law the hard way with my entire net worth and that of the one person who believed in me on the line. Still a partnership but a Limited Partnership. The 1907 act is only 7 pages long and protects your wealth from rogue partners creation of severality.

by ummonk 6y ago

thewebcount 6y ago

Yeah, same here. And even when it's a processor I know like Stripe, Square, or Shopify, I don't really trust those companies very much. I've gotten spam, other people's receipts, etc. from them and their tech support is horrible for the consumer. And if they aren't a name I know like one of the above, I'm really leery of giving them my email and credit card info!

cuddlybacon 6y ago
Same here. The last time I bought software that wasn't thru a well known store or processor I ended up with some fraudulent purchases on my next credit card bill[0]. Since then, I'll never do that again. [0] - Thankfully my bank handled this without issue.
YeBanKo 6y ago
While I am skeptical of cryptocurrencies, more and more often I catch myself thinking: I wish this seller just accepted bitcoin or something. I want to make a transaction and be done with it. I don’t want my email and credit card number end up anywhere long term. There was a lunch place near my work that I frequented. They used Square POS terminal, once I noticed that it somehow linked my email to my credit card, I started using cash to pay. Cash is horribly inconvenient and gross to handle, but at least once you paid you don’t need to worry about it. You can’t be hit with some unexpected charges, wait to check the transaction when posted, no possibility of data leak, no privacy concerns, etc.
- dylan604 6y ago
  Wasn't ApplePay supposed to address this? Each transaction creates a one-time-use number which is the only number the seller receives. It would no longer be valid if evilHacker(TM) tries to use that number for a fraudulent charge later.
  - Cullinet 6y ago
    At least in the UK, Monzo Bank gives me the ability to create and tear down virtual debit cards that I can name and use to individually identify which card I used. Each is complete with a CVC number. It's not one time unless you want to do the setup and teardown for every purchase, but the £15 monthly fee includes phone and other insurance and the app exports your account ledger to Excel and CSV. Customer service and vanishing transactions from the app ledger have been worrying me but I was promptly put in touch with management as soon as I dusted off a smidgeon of English idiomatic equivalents to "wtf" and this seems to have been caused by Transport For London running adjustments for the daily Oyster journey payment limit (via taking a holding charge placeholder payment in the way hotels ring fence for your stay on debit cards) so the final amount is adjusted the following day to enable the 0400 end of their day.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      So in 2020, in order to allow the employees to keep banker's hours and go home indecently early, they put a hold on a card so an employee can finalize the transaction the following day rather than just letting the computers handle the transaction to completion? How/Why is this still a thing? Just like why does depositing a check have a hold on it when the computer can quite easily check that the money is available for withdraw, and then move it to the depositor's account? The entire banking industry is so ripe for re-imagining, yet their strangle hold onto the old ways is super preventative from us evolving as a species.
      - jen20 6y ago
        0400 is 4AM, not 4PM, and has nothing to do with banking hours. 4am is the cut off time between “days” for TFL (London Transit) services - if you buy a ‘day travelcard’ it is good until 4am the following day. It is guaranteed that if you make several transactions in the same day on TFL (by swiping in/out with a contactless card - or an Oyster card - at the ticket gates), the amount paid will be capped at the value of a day travelcard. I’m quite sure no employee is involved in any of this, and computers handle it end-to-end. Banking in the UK is actually quite reasonable - largely because companies like Monzo have pushed it forward. It’s a constant surprise to me quite how _bad_ banking in the US is in comparison though - and most of your points seem to reflect how US banking works rather than UK banking - as indicated both by the spelling of “cheque” and the notion of using them in the first place.

Cullinet 6y ago

Being officially "semi retired" to cover a crisis of faith in the industry after a spinal problem nearly trashed my mental composure, and because of experiencing memory problems after quitting the painkillers [0], and consequently buying into Apple for the first time since 1987, I came to this discussion expecting to find reasons why I shouldn't commit to publishing the apps I've been working on [1] via the Apple Store. But 15% of gross? I have been thinking it was 30 percent of gross for the longest time and I can't believe myself for getting this so wrong. I worked in advertising sales when the industry was freaking out over losing the universal 15% gross "agency fee" [2] for a multitude of hopeless performance contracts [3] and on the other side, when I sold space for a major publisher my own commission was 15% of gross. A good salesman is worth 15%. At least to me. The thing that's drawing me, now far more strongly, to publishing via the store is that although vexing problems exist, this looks like the most transparent platform to my eyes because the developer community is surfacing the issues and not burying problems with FUD and MVP-speak. Credit obviously to the community above all. But even giants struggle with enabling any community. [0] Gabapentin. 2016: "NOT addictive don't worry John." 2019:"can I have you signature and ID?" - the UK government classified Gabapentin Schedule A along with heroin and cocaine. 8 months of dystopia and another 5 remembering how to think later the top "user reviews" found in the wild still praise Gabapentin to high heaven. Yes it does temporary wonders for concentration. I never took my full dose which was the minimum adult dose and broke regime regularly for at least two weeks a time and I don't even know how to describe the 8 months of "hell" because they were just too messed up. Gabapentin probably has amazing off label potential but now it's scheduled forget about intelligent prescribing. [1] deep into the data structures for a advertising scheduler with fun like network flow limits (since we discussed on Shannon, if this is enough to tickle you I'd love to hear from you, I've got man decades in this needing fresh eyes. [1] gross percentage fees wreck trading advertising simply. Google plus all mighty consortium wrote off $350MM in 2004 and AdAge said they were stuck on things we solved early. We hadn't solved lots they had. My Cofounder tragically died before the close of a critical stock placement and key man (that I insisted on afraid to ever lose a wonderful friend as well as Cofounder - replying to a snark about business and friendship he snapped (to a old friend of his no less I learned) "I don't know what kind of person you want to be in business with then but I hope you think better of your investors") [2] my original paper of 1995 cited the total economic capture of the agencies to be 60% of the gross total industry budget. I didn't hear anything similar until in 2018 the former chairman of Mediacom the UKs biggest buyer pull the exact same figure out of thin air. [3] the recent highly acclaimed book "Manslaughter On Madison Avenue" explains how the problems that made me light out for the territory in 1995 remain not only not fixed but not even addressed. Briefly I felt terrible pangs for trying to help the agencies who threw vexatious criminal copyright breach torts in the High Court at us within days of opening. Then I realised that anyone who can tell the problems just ran for the hills. Only being a partnership let us survive. A limited company requires professional counsel. I learned IP law the hard way with my entire net worth and that of the one person who believed in me on the line. Still a partnership but a Limited Partnership. The 1907 act is only 7 pages long and protects your wealth from rogue partners creation of severality.